New Biography | What makes Austria’s Chancellor tick

The Chancellor and his parents on the farm in Zogelsdorf: Josef Kurz (67) and Elisabeth Kurz (60) often see their son in Lower Austria at the weekends. In the early 1990s, they took in refugees from Yugoslavia at the farm

He has had a stellar ascent – at 31 years old, he is Europe’s youngest head of government: the Austrian Chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, is considered an exceptional politician – by Germans, too.

Many people are wondering: how could he reach the very top so fast? How did he become what he is now? For his book “Sebastian Kurz – die Biographie” (“Sebastian Kurz – the biography”), BILD reporter Paul Ronzheimer has followed Kurz for many weeks.

In part 1 of the series, Kurz’s parents talk about the refugees they took in at their home, back when Chancellor Kurz was still “Basti”.

Sebastian Kurz is six years old when he meets war refugees for the first time. It is 1992. The Yugoslavia War rages a mere 500 kilometres away from Vienna. Thousands of people are killed – a genocide in the middle of Europe. Millions of people are driven away or are fleeing. More than one hundred thousand want to go to Austria.

Elisabeth and Josef Kurz – the parents of the man who will change Austria and Europe 25 years later – see the images of these desperate people on TV. They decide that they want to help.

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Josef Kurz is 67 years old today and still works as an engineer, despite having reached retirement age. He looks strikingly similar to his son – soft features, the same impish smile.

“It was a certain mood,” Josef Kurz says of the time of the Yugoslavia War. “We heard that our national army was to be stationed there. Then we learned that there were already refugees in Lower Austria. Since we had space on the farm in Zogelsdorf, a family came to live with us on the farm.”

Zogelsdorf is the name of the place where Elisabeth Kurz grew up. 150 inhabitants, one war cemetary, one chapel. “We helped them learn German,” Josef Kurz says. “Sometimes I went to the indoor pool with the two refugee girls and Sebastian and had to make sure the three of them didn’t drown.”

Sebastian Kurz played here as a child. The farm was managed by his grandparents. His grandmother still lives hereFoto: SK

Back then, the man who will make history as Austria’s youngest Chancellor does not yet understand that the children have fled from the war.

“Since many children regularly visited us, this was nothing unusual,” says Elisabeth Kurz. “The difference was just that they could not speak German yet. But we tried not to talk about flight and war with the children.”

Today, Sebastian Kurz can still remember the girls who lived on the farm back then and with whom he spent time.

“They were girls who were in an extremely terrible situation,” he says. “But at least when they were playing, they seemed more or less care-free. I can remember exactly that I was wondering where their fathers are.”

Kurz’s grandmother fled to Austria

At an early age as a child, Kurz is confronted with the meaning of war, flight, and displacement. It is also part of his own family’s history.

His grandmother comes from Novi Sad (today Serbia). As a 16-year-old, she fled to Lower Austria during World War Two. As a young girl, she only speaks Hungarian and runs for 598 kilometres through Hungary and Slovakia to Lower Austria during the war. It is a march that takes several weeks – always accompanied by the fear of getting killed. In Lower Austria, she later meets Kurz’s grandfather.

“Mum kept telling me what happened there,” says Elisabeth Kurz, who still visits her care-dependent mother several days per week. “Corpses were lying in the roadside ditches. There were airstrikes all the time. The people who survived that and didn’t flee were simply shot.”

The then Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz in traditional garb with his girlfriend Susanne Thier at the Farmer Association Ball in January 2017Foto: People Picture/Rainer Eckharter

To this day, Sebastian Kurz’s grandmother often talks about what she saw during World War Two. “She keeps suddenly seeing these images, and she also dreams of it. It’s as if we have this issue of flight in our genes,” Elisabeth Kurz says. “It’s terrible – also for me. Like a memory, even though I have not experienced it. It’s inside me – and also the fear, of course.”

As a child, Sebastian Kurz notices that his grandmother can speak Hungarian. “That was somehow interesting, and I kept asking her about her story. This is of course a very formative experience.”

His grandmother’s experiences and the images of the refugees from Yugoslavia will also occupy Sebastian Kurz later, when he opposes Chancellor Angela Merkel’s course in the refugee crisis.